Main Spessart Bahn And 2d Trees

I hope DTG will replace the 2D trees on many of the hills. It kills the immersion for me on this route. It reminds me of dissapointing hill scenery back in the Microsoft Train Simulator days. I stopped in the middle of a drive today, because those trees just bugged my eyes. Unreal Engine can do nothing to uplift the experience of a 2D tree.

And I hope that the route will be extended to Würzburg, allthough I have yet to see an expansion to an existing TSW route.

The reason why it looks so awful is because they are so sparsely placed, which makes it even more obvious that they are 2D trees. They need to place the trees closer to each other.

Now I don’t know if they are that sparse in real life but the reason why it looks so bad is because there is no foliage or shrubbery underneath. It’s literally 2D trees on a green, textured hill/mountain.

In an ideal world there definitely needs to be more effort on the landscapes.

Thanks for the feedback. Since this has also been mentioned in other threads, I will forward this issue further.

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DTG have repeatedly proved that they can do it, we just want consistent quality. For me a major feature of TSW is enjoying the scenery. Players obviously spend a good chunk of time looking at it, which makes it all the more glaring when you see a bare green hillside with a few 2D trees randomly dropped about the place. On MSB it is 2D trees that are the issue, in the case of NTP it is 2D trees in addition to assets that are of significantly lower resolution than their surroundings. It stands out so starkly against what is essentially a very lovely looking game that it’s a bit of an immersion killer. I’d really hoped that this DLC release would have also seen an accompanying patch for NTP fixing the graphical problems there, but sadly not.

I can only surmise that it’s either time or commercial pressure that’s causing it, because I don’t believe the developer team for TSW would just look at some of the examples we’ve seen and take a view that “that will do”.

That said, thank you for being proactive & passing on the feedback, hopefully time can be found in the schedule to sort this out. It would be better for all concerned if it was right in the first place though.

2D trees aside, you just have to look at other UE4 games to see how far behind TSW is when it comes to distant scenery.

Vanishing of Ethan Carter from 2014, created by a small indie developer:

Even the Euro Fishing (2015) team at DTG can do a better job with distant terrain:

Then TSW (2017) where the terrain is all one texture, barren of trees, and the terrain mesh has holes so you can see day light through it:View attachment 11178

Or barren of trees with a garish bright green texture with the odd splodge of brown that looks like a child's finger painting:View attachment 11179

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Eh, it's better than TSxx for sure.

Remember- other games aren't necessarily always trying to handle tens of miles at triple-digit speeds most of the time. Remember how much work it took just to get TSW to a playable framerates on high-end PC's- there's just not enough room for fancy graphics for most people sometimes.

DTG loves marketing, if there's any chance for them to improve graphics, they will. Also, they have time constraints, you know.

Remember- other games aren't necessarily always trying to handle tens of miles at triple-digit speeds most of the time. Remember how much work it took just to get TSW to a playable framerates on high-end PC's- there's just not enough room for fancy graphics for most people sometimes.

DTG loves marketing, if there's any chance for them to improve graphics, they will. Also, they have time constraints, you know.

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Those are just excuses. The frame rate issue is down to the codebase being poorly optimised, which is something DTG should have fixed before release, as most of the issues we have now were present in the 2016 Beta. The holes in the terrain mesh and the poor texuring are just laziness and poor QA.

I disagree on TSW having better distant terrain than TS2019. TS2019 has a flat texture, same as the WSR image above, however the resolution of the terrain mesh is higher and it has much better shadows/lighting. Compare below in the quick and crude photoshop I just did. I think the TS2019 one looks better.

Those are just excuses. The frame rate issue is down to the codebase being poorly optimised, which is something DTG should have fixed before release, as most of the issues we have now were present in the 2016 Beta. The holes in the terrain mesh and the poor texuring are just laziness and poor QA.

I disagree on TSW having better distant terrain than TS2019. TS2019 has a flat texture, same as the WSR image above, however the resolution of the terrain mesh is higher and it has much better shadows/lighting. Compare below in the quick and crude photoshop I just did. I think the TS2019 one looks better.

As many of you have already said, the issue with trees has to do with performance. I cannot tell you exactly what required to allocate more resources in MSB, but I am sure the dev team took a thoughtful decision on this. I would also note that our focus is always to make the trackside environment look best, which I think they nailed in this one. In this one, if we added more trees to the background the framerate would be affected significantly.

As many of you have already said, the issue with trees has to do with performance. I cannot tell you exactly what required to allocate more resources in MSB, but I am sure the dev team took a thoughtful decision on this. I would also note that our focus is always to make the trackside environment look best, which I think they nailed in this one. In this one, if we added more trees to the background the framerate would be affected significantly.

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Optimisation of the codebase aside, the ground textures have a minimal impact on performance for a huge impact in appearance, and in MSB they are the same as in previous DLCs. There needs to be Wang tiling (or procedural generation) and greater variation in the ground textures. This would make the areas without trees look much better. This is something which is really easy to do, so would be an 'easy win' as they say.

Optimisation of the codebase aside, the ground textures have a minimal impact on performance for a huge impact in appearance, and in MSB they are the same as in previous DLCs. There needs to be Wang tiling (or procedural generation) and greater variation in the ground textures. This would make the areas without trees look much better. This is something which is really easy to do, so would be an 'easy win' as they say.

For Wang tiling I don't seen why it would be a problem to create a custom shader/material to do it, all the code is fairly simple. There are also textures called 'splat maps' which can help to get rid of the repetition in terrain textures.

The bottom line is that there are 101 solutions to the problem, so I don't understand why DTG haven't implemented any.

I took some screenshots of MSB yesterday but haven’t had time to include them. One thing is absolutely certain though, the distant terrain in TSW is poor, full stop. It is certainly not ‘next gen’. Sadly it seems to be getting worse too if this and NTP are anything to go by.

It is 2019, it can’t be beyond comprehension to provide a slider that allows the end user to tailor the scenery to their machine. To basically make the catch all solution be that the scenery looks like a game from the early 2000’s isn’t really good enough. I’ve been shot down for saying this before, but in my opinion it is to allow easy transfer to less powerful consoles. I’ve yet to see any evidence that I’m wrong.

What makes it worse is that the trackside scenery & locos look so good, that the contrast is massive and all the more disappointing.

Now I've got chance....first the (really) bad with everything on Ultra and a number of engine.ini tweaks to try and improve the graphics further. These screenshots are not upscaled to 4K so were taken with the setting on normal. They also demonstrate (the last image particularly) where I believe the lighting is completely off, between near/far and 2D and SpeedTree trees. In addition, it's very obvious as to just how poor the distant terrain is. No one can say that is next gen, it's not even last gen.

... For me a major feature of TSW is enjoying the scenery. Players obviously spend a good chunk of time looking at it, ...

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Please keep in mind that TSW is a train simulator, not a landscape simulator. I realize that a realistic landscape makes driving trains more believable and thus more pleasant, but I'm there to operate trains, not to watch scenery go by, and this is true even when I take advantage of TSW's option to "ride along". Players may "spend a good chunk ot time looking at [scenery]", but for me that is not the point of a railroad simulator, in which my task is to operate trains.

Please keep in mind that TSW is a train simulator, not a landscape simulator. I realize that a realistic landscape makes driving trains more believable and thus more pleasant, but I'm there to operate trains, not to watch scenery go by, and this is true even when I take advantage of TSW's option to "ride along". Players may "spend a good chunk ot time looking at [scenery]", but for me that is not the point of a railroad simulator, in which my task is to operate trains.

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Its a Simulator..... trains do not run in a void, the landscape is = part a character in the game as the loco, as it stands now you have 2d assets that are just down right ugly not even at TS20XX level , environment shadowing draws in at around 30 meters on all settings from low - ultra. TSW is a train simulator & part of simulating a real route and location is rendering the landscape with some level of authenticity.

Sorry your argument or point.. seems way off to me, i could then state by this logic that its a train simulator not a people simulator so passengers are not important... they play a role in aiding the simulation and when they bug out and climb all over the tracks or buildings its breaks the immersion ... and immersion relay is the core component of a sim hence why they just made a big deal about moving traffic... Sound has been improved ... why? it aids immersion. Improved loco physics.. aid immersion. Improving the horrible distance rendering ect helps aid immersion , the route team / art team already show there able to make amazing looking scenery.

Its a fair criticism that the distance landscape currently in the game is an eyesore with shiny hill sides and spares details , near side objects are reasonable but if you compare early routes GWE or RT with the current ones the landscape details have been reduced significantly across all settings , again and again i say this OPTIONS are good DTG just allow users with with performance to spare to cripple there machines with glorious details that we all know DTG's art team are more than able to create.

Being a long time simulation user, and looking at the history of flight simulations, the representation of the world seems to be secondary to the development of the flight modeling. Take the development of Xplane11 over the years, original release, the world left a lot to be desired, most GA airports were just runways in the proper orientation but no other scenery. P3D pretty much the same. As those simulations matured over the years, and with support from 3rd party developers, the attention to the world scenery improved.

TSW, in my reckoning, is still in its early stages, and even in this state one of the best rendered world environments compared to TS2019 and especially Run8. Can it be improved — sure. But I would rather see the other problems that many complain about incessantly be corrected. And just as Train Simulator, FSX and P3D’s graphics have been tweaked and improved over the years, so surely will TSW’s.

As many of you have already said, the issue with trees has to do with performance. I cannot tell you exactly what required to allocate more resources in MSB, but I am sure the dev team took a thoughtful decision on this. I would also note that our focus is always to make the trackside environment look best, which I think they nailed in this one. In this one, if we added more trees to the background the framerate would be affected significantly.

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I dont buy that one, 2D-trees dont have much impact on fps as they dont need much cpu or gpu calculations, thats why they are used. On Ruhr-Sieg-Nord there are hundrets if not thousands of 2D-trees in view (for example at Finnentrop or Plettenburg) and the fps are still good.
So why does it work on RSN perfectly with high density of 2D-trees and on MSB not? I am pretty sure placing hundrets of 2D-trees would cost only around 2-5fps if it is that much.

For me this is just an excuse for the bad scenery, maybe the release schedule was a bit to tight or to much time spend on the other parts like the port or whatever reason but for sure its not a performance problem of placing more 2D-trees.

On Ruhr-Sieg-Nord there are hundrets if not thousands of 2D-trees in view (for example at Finnentrop or Plettenburg) and the fps are still good.
So why does it work on RSN perfectly with high density of 2D-trees and on MSB not? I am pretty sure placing hundrets of 2D-trees would cost only around 2-5fps if it is that much.

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I don't know why DTG can't incorporate features from RSN into the new route. RSN has very good distant scenery (or at least does a better job of covering up the bald spots), and also includes new concrete ties spread throughout the route. However, despite the improvements in trackside scenery in Hagen Finnetrop, they did not include these RSN features in Hagen Finnetrop, even though I am sure white concrete ties existed in 2005 or whatever time period they chose to recreate HF in.

Although you have a point of truth, and I continue to find it a great simulator with its shortcomings, I am afraid that DTG DOES NOT DO NOT do anything with the complaints. In the short time that I am active on the forum I have learned to accept and enjoy the game as it is, DTG does not do anything.
For example, I have been annoyed since the beginning by the sound that suddenly disappears, so annoying, but you should not worry about it because that makes it a lot more fun to play. That the trees are not beautiful at a distance does not really bother me, but that the signs on the platform are off by default I do not really understand, it is fairly easy to change that I see on the furum, just like the advertising signs on the platform , they look so much nicer than the standard texts on every route. The firm also took on the cameras, a small detail, but so much nicer.
Why DTG is not concerned with this is a mystery to me, they can indent on the makers, but they do not. I still keep it a nice sim because say yourself, you can still pretty much drive than a train. But above all ...... you do not have to buy the sim

Although you have a point of truth, and I continue to find it a great simulator with its shortcomings, I am afraid that DTG DOES NOT DO NOT do anything with the complaints. In the short time that I am active on the forum I have learned to accept and enjoy the game as it is, DTG does not do anything.

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It's a shame that Trainz has not taken any major steps to improve their game. DTG needs a legitimate competitor to jump-start innovation. It's especially disheartening when people are jubilant about "new features" such as passenger display systems and road vehicles when these have been staples in TS19 for years now, and road vehicles were even present for the first few DLCs. We need the editor now more than ever, so we can see what 3rd party developers can sculpt with Unreal Engine and truly take advantage of the new features that come along with it.

As the chap above said, TSW is still in early development but we do need an editor, some third party without time constraints would put the engine to work.

But without core coding we wouldn't have much to play with, the improved traffic on roads, if you walk MSB and RSN its miles better than GWE, LIRR is nice too just the world aspect of course is still heavily WIP.